Messages - eabearce

Thanks for the help everyone once again. I contacted Northern Brewer and chatted with their rep and told them what I planned to do by including screenshots of Beersmith before the addition of Maple Syrup and after the addition with dropping my Maris Otter Pale Malt down 1 1/2 lbs, this seemed to keep the SG around the same. Sorry for me being all antsy, messing with recipes that require additions like this make me a bit nervous should come out with a beer around 5.3 ABV

Maple extract is actually fenugreek. It would probably be fine in a beer, but to my tastes the real stuff is way better. It's like comparing Aunt Jemima with real syrup.

Personally, I'd go with some grade B syrup in secondary. If you want to keep the ABV down, then cut the base malt by the amount of gravity points that the syrup will add. You could add in something like torrified wheat to boost the body a bit if you think you might need it.

Not that I disagree with your thoughts on this as I have never done this yet, but what about Grade B syrup straight into the keg at kegging time and force carbing it? Thoughts on an amount to use if I were to go this way?

Question for you all... I am interested in brewing a Maple Nut Brown and wish to add maple flavoring of some sort whether it be pure Grade B syrup or an extract. FYI I plan to keg this beer once fermentation is finished, and my thoughts were to simply add a bit of extract when I keg/force carb this as I don't want any more fermentables added to this brew raising my alcohol content? Any thoughts?

+1 to Denny's advice. It's nice to freeze and thaw the fruit to halp break up the membranes and such. Try containing your fruit in a paint strainer bag. Sanitize the bag, fill it with fruit, and zip tie it off. 3 lbs should fit in a gallon bag. I just used a five gallon bag to contain 10 lb of cherries. I don't make it tight, I give the fruit some room in the bag.

Forgot to mention that I am fermenting in glass carboys everyone My bad! That is another reason that I thought about the juicing option. I wouldn't be against using a strainer bag if I had a larger open top to add fruits. Thanks fmader!

You really don't need to pasteurize anything. I just take frozen fruit out to thaw, then add it to a secondary and rack the beer on top. When you heat it, you destroy flavors and set the pectin to end up with a gloppy mess.

I'll try that denny if you or anyone thinks my idea isn't that great. My thoughts I guess were with just a juice from these that I could avoid the mess altogether?

Just thought that I would throw this idea out there since I cannot seem to find a good straight answer on this. Last year I made a Raspberry Wheat with three pounds of frozen(and pasteurized by me) raspberries and then dumped the cooled down slurry into my secondary. Being that there was such a mess in the secondary I transferred all of this to a tertiary to allow for some settling before I bottled it. I recently made the same beer, however I added a blend of Raspberries, Blackberries, and Blueberries. Now I am at the same dilemma as last year. After racking to a tertiary vessel, I once again ran into the issue of my auto siphon clogging with all of the berry goo. So, enough of my rambling, and I will get straight to the question. Could I just take the same three pounds of berries and simply run them through my juicer, extract the pulp and toss it, and then just simply pasteurize the juice that I have and add that to the secondary and receive somewhat similar results minus the mess? What are your thoughts on this???

Due to issues with Ticketmaster I was unable to grab tickets to the Saturday 12:00 event with the rest of my group that I am traveling with and was only able to grab two tickets for the 5:30 PM event instead. Is there anyone that will please help me with my dilemma? I will be receiving my tickets in the mail from Ticketmaster.

Stupid Ticketmaster! I also had issues with securing tickets for Saturday at 12:00 PM and I was only able to get the 5:30 session for my wife and I. The problem that I am personally having is that I am attending this with a group and we all are flying out to Denver earlier that week. I would LOVE it if someone would be willing to trade 5:30 PM tickets for the 12:00 PM event. This is our first time attending this and it would be nice to sample with the people that I am going out there with. I will have two tickets available when Ticketmaster sends them to me in the mail.